


Blightsworn

by kathekon



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: Aftercare, Alcohol, BDSM, Bisexual Character, Blindfolds, Bondage, Cultists, Dysfunctional Relationship, F/F, Fingering, Fisting mention, Hurt/Comfort, Jubeka the stone butch, Lesbian Sex, Manacles, Prostitution, Sadism, Suicide mention, Torture, Trauma, Warlocks, Whump, difficult complicated people, dubcon, fever whump, foot worship, no-one is nice, non-con, starts out consensual but doesn't stay that way, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25874461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathekon/pseuds/kathekon
Summary: Black Harvest warlocks Jubeka Shadowbreaker and Shinfel Blightsworn fall into a complicated relationship as world events become somewhat less important than the ways each of them are damaged, and what they want from each other.A love story. Set from Legion through to 8.3.
Relationships: Jubeka Shadowbreaker/Shinfel Blightsworn
Kudos: 10





	1. Blightsworn

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter is set around the events of the Warlock class hall campaign in Legion but before Legionfall. While caring for the sadistic, unstable Shinfel Blightsworn after her doom curse, the studious Jubeka Shadowbreaker has a few realisations about herself, which she tries to work out through play with an unsuspecting Shinfel. It doesn't go particularly well. 
> 
> Please excuse any lore-breaking, I'm a casual WoW player. This may stand alone, although I wonder if it needs a follow-up/resolution chapter.

“When they say ‘virgin blood’, I read, it turns out they actually mean, not blood from a virgin, like an inexperienced girl – blood _never before used_ in ritual. This is going to save me a fortune in gold and a lot of awkward questions.”

The acolyte laughed, spiked shoulder-pad nudging his friend. “Like you ever found any virgins in Gilneas, anyway.”

“Technical virgins count, I checked.”

Jubeka Shadowbreaker smiled grimly at her students. She encouraged their banter. The spirit of young warlocks was what would get them through the painful, twisted path they had chosen for themselves, and it took her mind off the thousand and one things she had to do. Since their council gained its new First, and a demon world as its seat of power, she found herself busier than any time in her life and unlife. There was the demands of her research, keeping the demons subordinate during the First’s frequent absences, and then there were the other members of the council – each brilliant, yet broken, in their own particular way.

“Well, it’s good to see you’ve been taking your learning seriously – but if you want to alter the components of a ritual, do it _incrementally._ Otherwise, your funeral, not mine.” She laughed hoarsely. “Which was a dull affair, I’m told.”

The lesson over, she made to bundle her grimoire shut. The youths made themselves scarce. Horde, Alliance, neither. Here they were warlocks first. The strong and ambitious would weed out the weak. Sooner or later, one of them would probably take her place. The next Ritssyn, perhaps – or the next Kanrethad.

A shadow fell on her, dark in the fel-light, a slight frame with elementium spikes adorning the shoulders. Jubeka clicked her bony shoulders as if to shrug off the troubling thoughts.

_The next Shinfel._

The blood elf adopted her usual insouciant, idle posture, leaning on the black rock pillar nearest to her and inspecting her fingernails, which she had filed to sharp points. She tilted her head back, revealing a glimpse of her arrestingly bright, pale eyes under her hood.

“Are you ever not bored, Blightsworn?”

The elf showed her teeth when she laughed. “Are you ever not boring? Come. Entertain me.”

\--

Shinfel’s quarters were almost elegant, as far as anything could be here, but the effect was betrayed by her impatience and dark proclivities. A glistening bundle of shal’dorei silk lay, bought for draping and unused, an imp – a new one – gently snoring on top of it. Her war-ravaged faithful greatstaff shoved unceremoniously in a corner. The eredar twins served here almost constantly – in view of recent events, the council would not deny Shinfel her prize – and from time to time one shuffled past, docile as any bound demon, the wicked light in their eyes extinguished. They brought fine pale wines in a bucket stacked high with snow and ice, and bowed submissively before departing. Jubeka didn’t like to think too hard about what Shinfel had done to them, or had them do to each other. She had never met anyone who matched the blood elf’s sadism.

They had become lovers without any real intention beyond relieving Shinfel’s boredom and Jubeka’s staid devotion to her work. The forsaken warlock felt little physically and progressively less emotionaly, these days, and she had expressed doubt at the time – but there was something about seeing Shinfel that first time, her nude body scored by Cho’gall’s scars, her eyes burning, that wakened a feeling she thought had died when she did. It was difficult to explain, and perhaps she tried to express it through her touch. Jubeka wasn’t ready for a lover to touch her body in turn – she didn’t think she would ever be – but that suited selfish Shinfel well. The blood elf seemed to be an all-encompassing void when it came to sensation – there was almost nothing she couldn’t bear, and she experienced her catharsis, if that’s what it was, at the absolute pinnacle of pain and pleasure, where the body and mind started to come apart and a mis-step could result in permanent injury or madness. There was something about the beauty and ruination in Shinfel that touched deep within Jubeka. It was difficult to articulate.

This would be the first time they’d lain together since Mephistroth. Weeks had passed, Shinfel’s wounds healed and there was so much work to be done, they’d barely had a moment to themselves. Jubeka refrained from mentioning it and poured the wine. Shinfel, still in half-armour, downed hers immediately and poured more.

Jubeka found her mind wandering back to recent events, when she thought she’d lost Shinfel. She remembered the cold jerk in her stomach when the now-defeated Jagganoth grabbed the elf and flung her frail body halfway across the rift. Even before Shinfel hit the ground Jubeka felt an involuntary scream rising, and her mind frantically reassured her, _she can be raised, she can be raised_ – madness, and mometary, as she was quite sure whatever drove Shinfel was not the kind of character traits that make for a good, stable Forsaken.

Then there was the quest to recover her, when the unusual blood elf caught the special attention of the dreadlord. Shinfel never spoke of it, except in her usual dismissive tone – ‘demons are so tedious’. Jubeka had faced pain and fear before. Niskara nearly broke her, but sometimes, through the haze, she thought she heard Shinfel scream too – and then she was gone.

They got her back, finally, but it was hard to believe the stumbling, incoherent shell of a warlock before them at Dreadscar was Shinfel Blightsworn. Ritssyn and Kira and the new First had summoned her through the Nether, but it was Jubeka who moved to support Shinfel before she dropped, and it was Jubeka who felt that same kick of dread when the blood elf accepted her help silently, gripping her bracer for balance, rather than proudly pushing her away.

It was Jubeka who cared for Shinfel while the desperate rush to find a cure, albeit temporary, was undertaken. The First ran up and down the Broken Isles picking rare and foetid herbs, Ritssyn swore and scowled, Kira sniped at him, and Shinfel wandered in desperate dreams, clinging to life by a thread. She was the scholar, the one who did not abandon a friend, the one who had been able to act decisively when Kanrethad went too far.

It was Jubeka who held Shinfel when the curse-driven shaking fits were too violent; it was Jubeka who moistened her cracked and blistered lips, it was Jubeka who felt the sick shudder of shadow magic course across Shinfel’s skin and tenderly held her close anyway. Shinfel claims to have no recollection of her time under the doom curse, but Jubeka remembered her lover delirious, whimpering in pain and fear, sometimes unsure who or where she was, not knowing how much of herself she had given to the dreadlord, and how much was left.

Whatever it was she felt for Shinfel was almost like a physical pain, now. It transcended her dulled senses and sung high and bright across every nerve.

She remembers keeping the others away, on pain of – oh, she told them, more pain than they could stand, and after Niskara, none of them doubted her. They scattered. She returned to tending Shinfel’s wracked form, cursed the First for taking so long, and wondered if she, too, carried a kind of curse of her own.

\--

“Do something different,” Shinfel demanded, running her claws down Jubeka’s shoulder.

Being touched always made her shudder, now – doubly so when it was Shinfel. The blood elf straddled her, insistent, her breath hot and wine-laced on Jubeka’s face. “You have your head in a musty old tome all day, you must have a real horror of the ancients in store, don’t you? Hmm?”

“I might have.” Jubeka studied the elf. She did not partake in the wine, moistening her lips with fresh water only. She gestured Shinfel’s garb. “Let me see you – off with this.”

Shinfel complied eagerly, shaking off the last few pieces of her raiment and armour, tossing the ornately-spired shoulder pads to lie in a heap on the floor. Her nudity was a challenge, or a threat. She had the youthful physique common to her race, but Shinfel was thin even for a blood elf, her hip and collar bones standing proud from her pallid flesh. The black scars wound their way up her arms and down her torso, cupping her narrow waist and edging towards her soft puce nipples. With her hood off, her eyes blazed in the fel-lit gloom; on a dark night her unsettling appearance had had her pass for a death knight of Acherus more than once - Shinfel recalled someone lobbed a piece of rotten fruit at her once as she went about her business in Orgrimmar. In truth it was another legacy from the battle with Cho’gall and the arcane overload she had experienced there. Shinfel had been scarred and scoured before Mephistroth laid a finger on her.

From previous games, Jubeka knew that the shackles only augmented her fragile, ruined beauty. Tonight, they’d start here. Jubeka, taller when she stood to her full height, fixed the bonds above the blood elf’s head, pinioning her wrists in place. Shinfel tossed her golden head and licked her lips. Was it different this time? Jubeka wasn’t sure. Those blazing blue eyes revealed little.

Shinfel’s flesh responded as it had before to her touch. Slowly, methodically, Jubeka caressed the elf from neck to thigh, nudging apart the knees, stroking, probing. Dreadscar knew no seasons, but the nether-wind here was cold; gooseflesh rose on Shinfel’s bare skin and she shivered. Jubeka grinned, feeling the tightness that carried her through each day beginning to unwind, and a thrill of wickedness. Blindfolding the elf with a strip of shal’dorei silk, she reached for the wine bucket, moving silently. She then swiftly dumped the iced water within over the naked body in front of her, relishing Shinfel’s high, pained gasp. She wreathed them both in felfire, letting the elf struggle between its burning touch and the icy chill.

“More,” whispered Shinfel.

“You wouldn’t believe,” came Jubeka’s gravelly Forsaken purr, close to her ear, “what I found in those books. Demons from the dawn of time itself. The ancient depravities of the first warlocks.” Sliding a cool hand between Shinfel’s legs, she gently probed, parting folds and sliding a finger inside. The elf shuddered but tipped her narrow pelvis to push her clit into Jubeka’s palm, straining against her bonds.

“Rituals lost to time. Practices not even whispered of today.” She quickened, then slowed her intimate caress. “Curses of doom.”

She paused, her finger still inside Shinfel. This close, and with the elf still blindfolded in shal’dorei silk, it was difficult to gauge her expression - but Jubeka detected the quickening of her heart, the slight catch in her breath. Not arousal, not the simulated writhing and screaming in search of release that the elf had given herself to many times before – Shinfel was afraid.

“Dull,” the elf hissed. “Done that. Do something clever - if you know anything.”

“Too late. You drank the bespelled elixir twenty minutes ago. Trusting a Forsaken to serve you wine, my pretty little fool.” Jubeka began to gently flex her finger, drawing her other hand close to withdraw the blindfold. Some feathery strands of Shinfel’s hair were stuck to her damp skin, her arcane-tainted eyes wide. “Can you feel it?”

Shinfel went still for a moment, no doubt relying on her magical acuity to find out if Jubeka’s words were true.

She then began to struggle against her bonds for real. Jubeka’s expression had a stony calm. In the undead warlock’s heart, the feeling – whatever it was – was beginning to stir again. It was a fragile thing, and the game would be short.

“ _Stop_ , Jubeka,” the elf spat. “The First will have you flayed for this.” She twisted, scoring her wrists as she tried to break free, but the magic was doing its work. The corruption scars on Shinfel’s body began to darken, and even from where she was standing, Jubeka could feel the menacing hum of shadow coils beginning to wrap around her body.

She had learned the pain; all spells of this kind extracted a cost of this sort, but it was worth it to taste it in Shinfel’s body. Jubeka smiled, continuing to work her finger inside her. She brushed her lips to Shinfel’s skin; the elf always smelt faintly of peaches, the sulphuric tang of demons, and now – undead monster that she was, she supposed – she could detect the particular sweat of a terrified animal. It was intoxicating. She came in close to Shinfel’s delicate ear to whisper to her.

“Why would the First care? He didn’t want a dreadlord of the Legion to break you, for obvious reasons. If _I_ did, on the other hand, I think he’d rather reward my cunning and initiative.” The feeling rose in Jubeka with every cruel word. With her finger still penetrating Shinfel, even she, with her limited sensation to touch, felt the elf’s muscles contract and tighten in pain, the delectable moistness lessen somewhat. Even the warlock known as Blightsworn couldn’t eroticise this. Shinfel stopped struggling against her bonds but seemed to be trying to alternately curl in on herself or flail outwards, trying to shake Jubeka off her, or escape from her own body. Jubeka withdrew her hand and licked her fingers, watching with interest as Shinfel struggled.

A harsh word and the manacles shattered, fel iron obedient to a powerful warlock, and Shinfel stumbled to her knees, curling her shoulders in as if to protect her soft underbelly. Jubeka grabbed her chin and felt the sensation soar through her bones as she met Shinfel’s blue, burning eyes, welling with tears. The elf cringed away from her.

“As you know, a doom curse may only be removed by the caster. Perhaps I will keep you this way. You please me, this way.”

Shinfel let out a sob. “No – please – ”

Jubeka smiled benevolently now. The warmth rising in her billowed out like a sun. She felt _alive_ again. So lucky she was to have found someone like Shinfel. She imagined that she loved the elf, vulnerable, begging. Shinfel was curled in on herself again now, sweat streaking her fair hair, her slight shoulders shaking with pained gulps for air as the magic coursed across her skin, searing every nerve.

“But I will release you. I think you’ve had enough, for now.” Jubeka laid her hands on Shinfel and began to channel, chanting the incantation she had recently committed to memory. She felt the wrench and tug of power being expended, the brief, dizzying weakness that followed, and then something give.

“There. Well,” she said, and sat down heavily beside the elf, letting the warmth slowly dissipate as she recovered her energies from the draining invocation.

Shinfel didn’t move.

Some moments passed. The imp rolled in his sleep. The stars coursed overhead; somewhere on the ridge, an infernal touched down, and young invokers raised their voices in celebration.

Jubeka moved onto her knees, which scraped abominably on the lava-slag foundation of the Rift. She crawled over to where her lover was crouched.

“Shinfel?”

The elf remained motionless and folded in on herself, her head tucked between her forearms. When Jubeka touched her, she flinched visibly, but uncoiled, serpentine, and very pale. The shaking had subsided and her scars returned to their usual colour, but there was an absence about the elf that had Jubeka worried.

“Have some water.” Jubeka reached for a flask, offering it to the elf, who eyed it warily, then drank in quick, short gulps. She wiped her lips delicately. A gesture of the old, Silvermoon-educated Shinfel.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly.

“Are you all right?” Jubeka checked Shinfel over for injuries, as she had many times before. This part of the routine was also familiar. The elf’s skin was cold to the touch; Jubeka grabbed the nearest fabric, the shal’dorei silk, upending the sleeping imp and drawing its heavy weave close around Shinfel’s shoulders. The glistening, almost liquid purple fabric only accentuated the elf’s pallor, and her eyes seemed wider than before, although unfocused.

“You asked for something- ” Jubeka began, defensively, but Shinfel cut her off.

“Could you… just hold me? Please?”

The words sounded bizarre, wrong, and difficult to say.

“Of course, Shinfel.”

It was some time that they were like this, the elf cradled in the taller Forsaken’s arms. Eventually even Jubeka began to lose sensation in her leg that was pressed underneath Shinfel’s hip, so she shifted, but found her lover had slipped into sleep.

Not quite sure what else to do, Jubeka lifted her onto her bed, tucking the folds of silk around her body. One of the fel iron manacles crunched beneath her heel; Jubeka flinched, hating the sound, the memory.

The eredar twins waited outside, biddable, docile. “Clean up, and care for her, or I will rip your tails off and feed them to you,” Jubeka ordered, with a flash of uncharacteristic viciousness. The demons dipped their horned brows in cowed obedience.

She left.

Dawn came to Dreadscar Rift soon. In her own quarters, Jubeka Shadowbreaker put her head in her hands and hid from it.


	2. Shadowbreaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinfel goes missing and Jubeka goes to Outland to find her. Set post-Legion, early BFA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check the warnings. Usual warlock unpleasantness, torture, non-consensual sexual activities (more implied than graphic this time), violence, etc. Doesn't really resolve things or give a happy ending; there may be a part 3 but I can't guarantee that will either because, well, look at them. 
> 
> Thank you for the kudos, appreciate them.

The spires of Blade’s Edge Mountains sliced through the wind, eliciting shrieks and howls of torment. When it blew straight off the Nether, it chilled the bone like nothing else.

Huddled beneath a cluster of needle-point rock formations, the warlock waited.

Jubeka Shadowbreaker had spent a substantial portion of her life here, although focusing first on the obsessive cataloguing of demons and then Kanrethad, she hadn’t taken much time to get a feel for the place. There was something forlorn about it, and even since she was last here, the shattered land had noticeably deteriorated, entire mountains, farms, woodlands crumbling away and spiralling down into the Nether. The maps she had bought from the pilgrim post in Hellfire Peninsula were already out of date. She supposed, eventually, Outland would be gone and would exist only in the memories of the few who knew it as she did, and there were less of them every year.

A broken, dying world where the wind screams. It seemed a fitting place for Shinfel to have come.

She coaxed the fire forth, seeing her onetime lover’s amber locks in the leaping flames, and the wicked flash in her eyes. There was that faint scent of peaches and hellfire again. Jubeka stretched her feet out towards the flames and let her mind wander.

It was a strange time for the Black Harvest. With the fall of the Legion there were open debates about what the point of warlocks was any more, and some from the more zealous, threatening to ‘finish the job’ after Argus and purge Azeroth of anyone with even a whiff of fel about them. The Netherlord, as he now was, took it in his stride, and either by his reputation or other machinations, no-one came to the Rift to purge them. He was away a lot and returned less and less, but the work of the Black Harvest continued.

Each of them had their tasks which often took them away from Dreadscar to the corners of the world and beyond, so it was not unusual for Shinfel to go, but days became weeks, and there was no message, and she did not return.

So, here Jubeka found herself, on the crumbling vestige of a dead world, looking for her. She had the Netherlord’s permission; he rarely refused a genuine request, but Jubeka remembered how the man – so young, preoccupied, without a scar on him – seemed to see through and past her. He had never commented on the love affair between the variously ranked third and fourth on the council, although he must know.

“I expect you both to return,” he had said, and that was that.

There was a trail of sorts. Coming to Outland had been guesswork based on what she could gather about the elf’s state of mind. Jubeka surmised that Shinfel would come somewhere she wouldn’t be followed by the irritant aspirants that hung around the Six like a cloud of blackflies, somewhere where there was still forbidden knowledge to be found in her specialism – and somewhere cold and lonely where she could hurt things and watch things die. Or, perhaps, somewhere fit for her own ending. It was that that had Jubeka worried.

Something moved in the dark; a whisper of loose stones, a bestial growl. Jubeka reached for the smooth, worn staff, the enchanted inlay humming to life at her touch.

The demons must have been prowling around her camp for some time; she counted two – no, four, sets of fel-lit eyes in the darkness.

 _There is no chance at all_ , Jubeka thought, even as the incantations formed on her tongue and her hands crackled to life with fire, _that this isn’t her doing_.

The first felhound was on her before she even got the spell off, and she felt the crackling flame wither, cut off at its root, as the beast swelled with power. _Felhunter, devourer of arcane energy, hungry little buggers_ , she heard her own voice a world away, providing instruction to a room full of initiate demonologists. The second took her from the side. Razor-sharp canines clamped down hard on her hand and wrist. She could smell its hot breath; its lashing quills stung her skin as its teeth rent her flesh.

The fight was over in a few quick, sharp flashes of orange flame. The corpses of three scorched demons lay at her feet; the fourth fleeing. What was once a legion forge camp was quiet again, save for Jubeka’s harsh, fast breathing.

The wound was a mess; two of her fingers wouldn’t cooperate, and it was hard to tell what flesh went where. With her good hand she fished a healthstone from her pack and thought better of it; using magic to heal it up like this would probably do more harm than good. The degeneration of Jubeka’s body had been mercifully slow; she intended to keep it that way. She settled for a bandage, pulling it tight with her teeth, and resolving not to be caught flat-footed again. No more fires.

In her dreams, Shinfel was laughing at her.

The next morning, a thick fog swept in from the fungal marshes below and swathed the rocky spires in a blanket of white.

Jubeka had slept fitfully, the wound throbbing, the cold seeping in through her cloak. She had no appetite for the dry rations she carried. She took some satisfaction in dragging the felhound corpses from last night to the edge, giving them a solid kick and watching them drop off the edge of the world.

If Shinfel desired her death, she supposed, she’d kill her. It was within her capabilities. Jubeka had the versatility to effortlessly switch between the obsessive study and cataloguing of demons to the summoning of roaring fires – to, more recently, curses of doom. Shinfel was a specialist in suffering, as Jubeka was finding out. She had devoted her life to making things die slowly and painfully. Jubeka had never really thought too hard about what type of person chooses to do that – or what type of person is drawn to them.

Shinfel’s trail was fresh; Jubeka found the places where she’d camped, and the occasional pitted, suppurating corpse – mainly the bird-men that still scratched out a living in this region, but there were others. Jubeka had to admire Shinfel’s care in locating a Forsaken woman to murder – an archaeologist, or botanist, or something; Jubeka didn’t care for the practical arts, and Shinfel hadn’t taken her pack; tools and samples lay spilled out over the shale. The corpse was left as it had died, curled in on itself, jaw twisted in agony.

“I understand you are angry with me,” Jubeka said out loud. Evening was falling. She hadn’t spoken to anyone but herself and her demons in some time. Time moved strangely here; perhaps it had been longer.

By the third day of the fog, she began to see the shapes of felhunters in it, innumerable, ravenous. Jubeka shivered and cursed the day she’d let Shinfel know her particular hatred for all canines.

“I’m a cat person,” she had said, and Shinfel smiled in her feline way and noted down the information for later. They were quiet, but she imagined she heard their feet moving in the dark.

On the fourth day her foot went right through the world; the crumbling ground gave way and she found herself staring down into a new nether-chasm of her own creation. She was getting close to the Netherstorm. Voidspawn prowled here, and in the distance, the old siphoning engines of the Blood Elves.

Had Shinfel come here, like her prince before her, seeking something to fill that swirling void?

She didn’t make much more progress that day; her wound was really beginning to bother her. _Sod her_ , she thought, _I’ll go get this fixed up and then I’ll come back_. There was a Horde stronghold to the south; if Shinfel was alive, she could wait a while.

The fissure erupted without warning, a crack and then a high wild scream as rock ruptured and split. Jubeka stumbled and fell, pack and staff tumbling into the abyss below. The cold was all-encompassing, horrifying; she imagined she felt demons clawing at her legs as she kicked into the nothingness, struggling to dig the nails of her good hand into the fragmenting rock.

_When did she become so weak?_

It took more time than it should have and more energy than she had. Thousands of tons of rock spiralled down into the abyss, a few specks remaining suspended as islands in the air – and Jubeka, sweat-slick, trembling, lay in the dust at the new edge of the world.

It was now that Shinfel revealed herself. Jubeka’s hazy vision picked out the blood elf’s slight form in the crumbling dusk, the luminescent eyes of the pack of felhound at her heels. No hearthstone, no water, no map, nowhere to run, and the cold nether-wind licking her heels.

Jubeka understood. For Shinfel to be satisfied, Jubeka had to know true fear. For a warlock, death was a setback; she’d portioned off her soulstone before, and that’s before one considers the everyday reality of the Forsaken. Not death, no - what Shinfel wanted her to contemplate was annihilation. This is why she had come to the very edge of the world.

By the slanted, satisfied smile on the blood elf’s face, she seemed to be content with the outcome. Her soft talbuk-leather boots whispered through the gravel until she stood directly over Jubeka.

“Please forgive me,” Jubeka whispered, and tilted her head to kiss the boot. Her lips were dry but she did her best, gently laving it with her tongue, feeling for the juncture of Shinfel’s toes, the delicate arch of her foot.

The blood elf’s face twisted to pure sadism. The last thing Jubeka felt was the brutal jarring shock of Shinfel’s greatstaff coming down on her wounded hand, and the last thing she saw as her vision faded, the green-eyed, quilled felhounds closing in.

-

In her dreams – if you can dream while spiralling down into the Nether - their roles were reversed. She was powerless, bound in enchanted iron. Shinfel touched her against her will; she knew Jubeka did not receive, and didn’t care. Every torment dished out was returned on her flesh, every indignity was repaid in kind. Shinfel had her demons on hand; she was never creative, and often referred to them for wicked new torments, or simply to give Shinfel a little taste of the pain she was dishing out. She laughed often before forcing something new and cruel on Jubeka.

Her tolerance was high, but not infinite. First, like Shinfel, she begged for it to stop. A while later she begged for death, then for annihilation. She didn’t want the Netherlord to piece _this_ back together. That seemed only to infuriate the elf. Jubeka – what was left of her – didn’t understand what Shinfel wanted. She suspected Shinfel didn’t either.

Shinfel broke her so thoroughly that there was nothing left of the master summoner, body and soul. There was not an ounce of kindness or comfort in Shinfel; she existed to give pain, and seemed to take no pleasure in it – she was doing it for no reason, not even revenge, not even idle amusement. Once the work was done and there was nothing more to be had from Jubeka, she tossed her body out to the ravenous felhounds and closed the door.

 _You are a curse_ , Jubeka thought, and finally, perhaps, understood.

-

The room was bright and stank of bird leavings and unguents. Sun spots spun in front of Jubeka’s eyes; every part of her felt simultaneously swollen and dessicated. She was aware of the shufflings of birdfolk in the background; this was one of their dwellings, most likely.

Of course Shinfel – the real Shinfel – was there. She was wearing some kind of loose draenic garment which fit her oddly, but her bright hair was freshly washed for a change, sticking out from her head like a soft halo. She was wearing sandals of woven grass, her feet up on Jubeka’s bed, a grimoire in her lap, carelessly creased as she leaned forward.

“You’re awake? Good. Now, do _you_ want to explain to the Netherlord how I had to put down my promising research to drag you back off the edge of the world?”

Jubeka blinked at her. There were words, she understood their meaning, but it didn’t seem to be coming together in her mind. Shinfel’s presence and barbed yet merry chatter coagulated in her mind like spoiled milk.

“It would have been courteous of you not to be half-dead when I did find you. I had to walk _miles_ to find an ‘obliging’ felguard to carry you here, and then I had to ‘convince’ the arrakoa to patch you up.” She smiled nicely. “They are competent enough. You will live and there will probably be no lasting damage. I suppose the Netherlord will be pleased that you didn’t come out here to turn yourself into a demon like Kanrethad. I’d pictured you with face tendrils and a big eye in the middle of your forehead, like the Observers you wrote about.”

Jubeka followed the tension in Shinfel’s body. It didn’t make sense, Shinfel had it backwards – or did she? Jubeka was not sure how much of the past few days was real and how much her fever dreams. She swallowed, seeking moisture to form sound.

“I owe you my life, then. Thank you, Shinfel.”

Shinfel made a dismissive sound, dropping her feet from the bed. There was definitely a nervous energy about her, but Jubeka’s senses were either more dulled than usual, or the madness was uncommonly difficult to read today.

“That’s of no consequence. If you tried to draw a map of who owed who what among the Black Harvest, you’d just end up in a big knot, mostly tied up around Kanrethad.” She cracked her knuckles. “Anyway, you need to gather your strength for the journey back to Dreadscar. I made some important advances in my research and I need to speak to Rittsyn as soon as I can.”

 _She is lying_ , Jubeka’s intuition told her, but she was a liar, she made her skin crawl, and here in the late Outland sun with her scars and her smile and her evil little heart, Jubeka never found her more beautiful. She supposed she had found what she was looking for.

Just to punctuate the thought, Shinfel leaned in further and planted a cool kiss on her brow. Her hands did something with the covers that she might have observed the bird-folk doing, tucking Jubeka in more warmly.

“Rest now,” she commanded, and without another glance, turned back to her grimoire.


	3. Underbelly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during late BFA. The Council of the Black Harvest develop grave concerns about the wellbeing of their leader, the Netherlord, and resolve to act.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have tried to keep the character of the Netherlord and other player-input elements as far offscreen as possible, so it isn’t too jarring. Nonetheless, at least as far as this fic is concerned, the Netherlord is a human male and the new ‘sixth’ that the player selects at the conclusion of the class hall campaign is Kira Iresoul.
> 
> I wanted to tell a bit of the unseen story of the Black Harvest during BFA as our warlock NPCs get no screen-time at all. This chapter is a bit of an ensemble piece; I hope to resolve things for Shinfel and Jubeka in the next one (or two).

“To match his,” Shinfel purred, stroking her collarbone to show off the ornament to its best advantage. The azerite glistened like water, its blue-golden glow dancing over her pallid skin. It was probably dripping with offensive magic, but the jeweller’s cut of each stone, the heart-shaped lozenges and interlocking chains, unquestionably named it a lover’s gift.

Jubeka, noble in life, thought it looked gaudy – the ostentatious setting, the way the piece rested high on her neck, almost like a collar – but she supposed there was no accounting for taste. She looked sideways at Shinfel without moving her mouth.

“You favour men now, do you?”

“I favour the _living_.” Shinfel chuckled, caressing the stones with her fingernails. “Warm bodies.”

The barb didn’t have any sting for Jubeka, not any more. “And how is that going for you?”

Shinfel sucked her lip, sliding her hands inside her cloak again. “Men are men and humans are humans.”

Jubeka wasn’t sure what brought out this unusual candour in Shinfel - perhaps she was enjoying having her gift to flaunt, or else there was something on her mind. Shinfel rarely opened up to anyone unless there was something to gain from it. Jubeka smiled half a smile. If nothing else, it was good to talk. “Goes to sleep right away, leaving you unsatisfied?”

Nothing changed in Shinfel’s demeanour, save for a slight quickening in her speech; it lost some of its idle flatness. “He doesn’t really sleep much any more,” she said, and then, a further admission: “His nightmares are getting worse.”

Jubeka’s suspicions were confirmed; the Netherlord’s health was the reason for the meeting. If Ritssyn hadn’t proposed it, she would have done it herself. It had been less than a week since she was last alone with the First, discussing recruitment - and she remembered how the confident, self-possessed Lord of Dreadscar had just stopped mid-sentence, gazing blankly and unresponsive to her increasingly alarmed entreaties. She remembered how he turned, looked at her with a burning ferocity she had never seen before, spoke a few harsh words in a voice that was not his own. Then whatever it was left him; he blinked, apologised for his ‘absence’, and continued.

_Six mouths that hunger._ She had scoured her library and interrogated the demons of the Rift – nothing. She had meant to prise the information out of Shinfel, whose affair with the Netherlord was no secret – but then Ritssyn had called a meeting, of which the Netherlord was not to be informed, on pain of, well, Ritssyn was never subtle or one to labour the point.

“He forbade me to mention it.” Shinfel’s speech was slowing down again, with the curve of a nasty grin. “So I am mentioning it, or at least I will, when the time is right.”

The two women walked in silence for a short while.

“If he has to die –”

Jubeka cut her off. “You would be unwise to give voice to such… disloyal ideas.”

“Here?”

They rounded a corner. Dalaran had maintained its position above the Broken Isles, which enjoyed a northerly climate; the decadent Elves below kept warm with spell-thread cloaks and glamours of the air. Up here the late autumn rain was turning to sleet, slicking the cobbles underfoot. Not many were out; the two cloaked warlocks passed through the grate opening without incident. Shinfel pushed back her hood, revealing a mop of soft amber hair, and those ice-blue eyes, as she blithely suggested murdering her lover and the First of their order. It was more than the weather that gave Jubeka the chill of Northrend.

“The First may be troubled, but he is not incapable. The walls have ears, Shinfel,” Jubeka pointed out, unnecessarily – as a young man in a poorly-fitting cape jostled past, imp out for all to see. The quality of the recruits was declining, she thought. She kept her own hood up and leaned on her staff like a walking stick as they descended into the dark. There was more acolyte chatter around the gateway to Dreadscar – youngsters all, an orc, a human and one of the exotic Nightborne from the isles below. Jubeka caught a snippet -

“Is it ‘Flames’ cowl’ or ‘flame _scowl_?’ I never managed to figure that one out.”

Restraining an irritated immolation she turned the corner sharply, ignoring the acolytes’ sudden frightened deference upon recognising Shinfel. “Oh, good evening, Madame Second!”

_Second_. That stuck in Jubeka’s craw, but she couldn’t fault Shinfel’s ingenuity, wickedness or – most likely – willingness to get into bed with the First. She had earned her rank through means mostly foul, and the arrogant blood elf was certainly enjoying the attention, by the jut of her chin and the lightness in her gait.

They were not going to Dreadscar today. The meeting was to be held in the Underbelly, in one of the disused buildings that ringed the Circle of Wills, and it was both unofficial and top-secret. Jubeka already had a sinking feeling about it.

The others had got there first. Zinnin greeted them silently with a nod and a note in the ledger that he carried around with him. Rittsyn and Kira were engaged in a hushed conversation which they broke off on the arrival of the Second and the Third.

Jubeka drew back her cowl and peered into the shadows. “Kanrethad?” she inquired.

“Not here.” Rittsyn’s eyes glowed like embers in the darkness. “We agreed – council only. Not retired council.”

“Or incapacitated council,” added Kira, eliciting a grunt of acknowledgement from Zinnin. The absence was felt by everyone; as they moved to the centre of the room, a space at the head of the table was conspicuously empty.

The worgen rolled back his shirt sleeves and turned a fresh leaf in his ledger. His eyes traced every one of them, the question unspoken but clear in each mind. _What are we going to do about the Netherlord?_

Kira spoke first; perhaps she had the most to prove. “As designated keeper of the archives in the First’s… absence, I have had the opportunity to look into the matter.” A speech felt imminent. Zinnin’s eyes said, _I hope she keeps it short._

Kira cleared her throat and began to speak. “ _We either succeed together or we die alone_. That’s Kanrethad’s precedent, and whatever we feel about it now – we cannot fail to note that following this maxim has brought us great power and advantage. _Far_ more than we might have hoped for by slitting each others’ throats. I therefore propose that we do what we can to help the First, to heal him of his affliction and restore him to health.”

Kira spoke confidently, but the burning gaze of the pre-eminent warlocks were clearly taking their toll on her poise. It didn’t help that she had come to the meeting in disguise and could have been mistaken for a Westfall farmer’s daughter in her peasant dress and bodice. She cleared her throat again. “If his affliction puts our order at risk, and if we cannot heal him within reasonable timescales… I suppose we’ll kill him then. We’ll have to,” she finished artlessly.

A rumble of laughter from Rittsyn. “And how do you propose we go about doing away with this… _affliction_? The Netherlord is not bespelled or cursed, and unless you, _apprentice_ , know something I don’t, we as warlocks are incapable of healing.” He rubbed his flame-scarred chin to underscore the point.

“We need to know what we’re dealing with,” Jubeka observed. “It seems something has hold of the Netherlord’s mind and won’t let go.” She clacked her fingertips together uncomfortably; she was going to have to ask.

“Shinfel? This is your area of expertise.”

Shinfel smiled, baring her teeth. “I have been working _closely_ with the Netherlord recently and I have some understanding of what ails him. We all know the power of the Old Gods.” She rubbed her bare arms as Zinnin leaned forward, as if to speak. “It is N’Zoth the Corruptor that has its claws in our dear First, and this is why he suffers. He has not deigned to share this _vital strategic information_ with his vaunted Alliance, or even the guardians of Azeroth herself. But I have had it from his own lips, while he slept. N’Zoth has chosen him and named him _Herald_.” A peal of laughter. “Our own Netherlord would preside over the end of the world!”

The council fell into stunned silence for a moment. Since they last met, each had carried out their appointed task – Zinnin to Stormwind, Rittsyn to Orgrimmar, Kira to Boralus and Jubeka to Zuldazar, to gather news, whispers and secrets to inform their next action. The Corruptor’s return was not discussed openly, but it was discussed everywhere, and whispers were beginning to grow of armies on the march, unrest near the Titan forges, an ancient empire to be rebuilt – and whispers and promises in the ears of the powerful.

It was Rittsyn that broke the silence. “If what you say is true, Blightsworn, this… this affliction, it’s beyond our capabilities.” Zinnin began to write furiously. Shinfel tilted her head towards Rittsyn, her fingers moving again to caress the azerite lavaliere at her collarbone.

“Oh, I concur. The only matter left to decide is how, and when, we kill him – and who will lead the Black Harvest once the deed is done.” She flicked her hair from her face. “I am presuming that would be me, as his trusted Second.”

Zinnin tilted his head, scrawled on a slip of paper and passed it to Jubeka, who read in her throaty whisper: “Kill him – if allied, invoke wrath of an Old God?”

She incinerated the paper in her palm. “True. That is… certainly something to avoid, until we significantly increase in power.” Zinnin grunted his curt agreement, as Kira, recovered, turned on Shinfel.

“Given that you’ve been working so ‘closely’ with him,” she observed archly, “how are we to be certain that you don’t share his taint?”

Shinfel’s eyebrows twitched, a warning, but Kira was undeterred. “I have been reading about the history of the Black Harvest, and your encounter with Cho'gall. You were made a prisoner in your own mind, your body spewing corruption forth over your allies, your very blood surging with the taint of the Old God." She leaned forward. "Is that what Mephistroth wanted from you?"

Shinfel hissed the first words of her curse, shadows coiling around her hands. Jubeka kicked her chair backwards, moving to intervene, but even as Kira’s hands filled with a defensive gauze of flame, it was Ritssyn that got there first, silencing Shinfel with a cuff to the jaw. Stunned, or sensible, the blood elf dropped to the ground. She might have long ago surpassed Rittsyn in spell power, but physically, she was no match for him.

“Jubeka, you will accompany the Second to the sands of Uldum,” the orc snarled in a tone that would brook no challenge. He imposed himself bodily between them, recalling the time when he had led the council; the strongest and the First. 

“Zinnin will remain with the Netherlord. He cannot betray the reason for our absence, and if the deed becomes inevitable, he will act.” Over Kira’s disbelieving stare, he continued. “My onetime apprentice and I will travel to Pandaria. Our order is young, but its founding principles stand – _where we have a choice_ , we do not abandon our fellow warlock, and where there is power to be wrenched from the claws of our enemies, _we take it_. This meeting is over.”

The scuffle had already attracted the attention of various dregs from the sewers, so Rittsyn didn’t trouble to make his exit subtle; the fel-hum of his gateway lit up the room and set the rats to flight. After a moment, Kira regained her composure, dusted off her peasant costume and followed.

The silence was punctuated by Shinfel spitting blood. The scream of rage didn’t follow until after the others had gone. 


	4. Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Fourth War, the Council of the Black Harvest has disbanded, but Jubeka can’t let go of her promise not to return without her expedition partner Shinfel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's smut. Updated warnings/tags for generally dark things.

\---

“No,” said Mad Ernie, and turned back to shaking the dregs out of a bag of goat feed. “I’m an alchemist, not a priest.”

The rain beat down grimly, relentlessly; it was as if the weather wanted to make the Gilneans feel at home.

“Ritssyn sent me,” she lied.

“Yeah, that’s the second time this year I’ve heard that, and I am feeling a lack of, what’s the word – reciprocity.”

She dropped the necklace in the mud and turned on her heel, back to the wagon, where the terrified young driver sat upright, not even hoping for payment, just to escape with his life. If she had to force this, too, she would, although she would prefer not to. She bent to see to her charge.

The journey had been difficult. It was winter now in the Broken Isles, the ground was an icy mire, even Ernie’s goats were huddling together for shelter. Yet Shinfel burned with a fever that would not abate; and Jubeka only knew one who might be willing to heal her, an exile, enemy of Horde and Alliance alike. The Black Harvest was gone, they had not a single friend in the world but each other.

Ernie was there, stuffing the azerite into his waistcoat pocket and moving to assist Jubeka. “All right, let’s get her inside. Not the main house! My cottage. Fewer folk know, the better.” He frowned. “Look, don’t worry about the trinket. Market’s glutted with this stuff now anyway. Consider it a favour to Ritssyn, but tell him to stop this, okay? I am really, really done with all of this. No more warlocks, no more doom curses, none of it. Give me goats and fresh air.”

Ernie’s cottage had an attic, too small to fully stand up under the sloping eaves, but it was warm and dry. Carefully, as if handling a fragile, fragmenting parchment, Jubeka laid Shinfel out on the low pallet bed. The blood elf’s breathing was short and quick, her closed eyes ringed with shadows, surrounded by a waxy pallor in the lantern’s light. Ernie leaned in close for a moment, getting the measure of his patient.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” he said, too cheerfully, and took the ladder so quickly he almost lost his footing.

At the sound of muffled cursing from below, Shinfel’s eyes cracked open; the arcane blue glow had a feverish intensity. Jubeka instinctively took her hand. “You are safe, my pretty one,” she murmured, as she often had before, comforting Shinfel after their worst debaucheries. Shinfel tried to speak, but Jubeka couldn’t pick out anything, or at least, nothing that was coherent; mad litanies of the Old God, memories, half in Thalassian, and vile curses that she hadn’t the strength to cast. Jubeka put a finger over her lips, shushing her, then gently stroked her fevered, gaunt brow and cheekbone. The sickly-bright eyes slid closed again. Jubeka was gripping her soulstone so tightly she thought she was putting nail digs in it.

Ernie returned presently with two vials. “This one right away, this one in a half-hour. She must drink all of it. Help her swallow if you have to – like this.” He gestured massaging the throat. “Come the morning, you’re going flower-picking for the next dose.”

Jubeka met his gaze briefly, then returned her attention to Shinfel. It was easiest to get behind her and rest her body against her own. 

Ernie rocked back onto his boot heels; the loft felt small, too intimate. “Down the hatch and hope for the best. I'll say a prayer.” He left the lantern when he descended. 

The elf had no strength to prop herself up and her head was nodding as she drifted in and out. With difficulty – both the dexterity of the task and the closeness of Shinfel, Jubeka uncorked the remedy one-handed and tilted the elf’s head back, pressing the vial to her lips. A pungent odor filled the loft; herbs in alcohol, something fermented, perhaps fungal, and Jubeka would bet her felhound on it being laced with magic of some kind. She administered it bit by bit, and gently massaged the throat to ease swallowing. Once the last drop had been emptied from the vial into Shinfel’s mouth, she adjusted her posture, pressing her back up against an old beam. From here, it was easy to cradle Shinfel’s limp form in her lap, softly stroking her hair.

The warm, thrumming lightness in her chest was there, stronger than ever before. She would not let Shinfel go, now. Broken, defiled, mad, she didn’t care. As the rain drummed on the slates above and Shinfel’s rapid breathing slowed to a soft, regular sleeping rhythm, Jubeka’s mind began to wander, back to the last time she felt it.

\---

Uldum buzzed, not with the swarm, but with activity. Horde, Alliance and neither congregated over the aftermath of the Fourth War and the fall of the Old God. A brisk trade was being done in relics, things unearthed from the sands, mementos of the war. Druids called out to each other and sang and stamped as they worked to heal the tumor-scarred, suppurating ground. Tol’vir workmen yelled in their throaty, lilting language; repairing the dam was going to be an enormous project, but they set about it with vigour, because peace had broken out and the world was coming back to life again.

Jubeka Shadowbreaker rounded a corner, scanning the street up and down. She had made an uneasy peace with the felhound species; on a leash, the demonic dog was just about acceptable here. People who knew what it was gave the pair of them a wide berth, but for most, it didn’t even factor into the strangest things they had seen that year. It tolerated the leash with ill-humour, but obediently followed, sniffing the air, flexing its quills into the sultry wind to pick up the ripples and splashes of magic that only it could see.

Wrapped in rags, a beggar slumped listlessly in an ancient portico. Her head was down but the slender ears extended through rips in the hood. In two short paces Jubeka was in front of the girl and had her chin gripped between bony phalanges, peering intently into her face.

_No_. The eyes that looked back at her were golden – as some of them were these days – and the wrist she had gripped to stop the girl running away was thin and scabbed over with sunburn but lacked the distinctive black webwork of scarring.

The girl blinked at her in stupefied fear, or perhaps just hunger. Jubeka released her; she didn’t even run away. The felhound sniffed, flexed its quills and began to paw at the ground. It was hungry too.

She was nobody here and it was refreshing, she supposed. Free of obligations. The council had been dissolved, perhaps permanently; the Netherlord was no longer just their First but the Champion of Azeroth, a rather more pressing role. In the end he had prevailed over the god of his nightmares; he never indicated he knew anything of the plot on his life, but certainly he never came to Dreadscar now. Kira had reported back from the signing of the peace treaty in Stormwind; she affirmed he was present, but grey-faced, oddly on the edge of proceedings given his pivotal role in the downfall of the Old God. Perhaps the Alliance could still not stomach a warlock hero; that said, she wasn’t sure the Horde would have behaved differently. When last she heard from him, he was heading for Stranglethorn where he had a little house by the sea; she suspected the poor man was simply exhausted.

Ritssyn had taken on the mantle of First for the tasks that needed to be done; he had brought back relics and tomes from Pandaria which the senior acolytes fell upon with relish. Kira apparently tired of his company after the enforced time together; it was he and Zinnin that shared the caretaking of the Rift and ensuring the continued obedience of its native demon army.

And Shinfel, Shinfel was lost to them.

For the second time, Jubeka had failed to return in a pair. There would be no repercussions. Since the entity the vow was made to was dissolved, she could be justified in turning to her own affairs, which were in some amount of disarray. She bitterly regretted placing assets in the Undercity bank, which was choked in a tide of blight now. She had not had chance to truly consider where her loyalties lay in the new Horde under the Council – or with Sylvanas, the Warchief who first offered her a kind word when she broke free of the Scourge and now seemed to have gone to war with death itself. There was also her own research, the unending quest to remain pre-eminent. She was working with demons again, which had always been her preference, and after her research into imps she was beginning to construct a working understanding of the anatomy, reproduction and behaviours of the mo’arg. She had more than enough to keep her occupied –

\- and yet, here she was, searching a war-scarred desert for one who was most likely dead, mad or turned monstrous, for no reason other than one she kept concealed deep within her breast and never mentioned to anyone.

The felhound clicked twice, tossed its blind, quilled head and indicated a southward direction.

“You smell her, or you want me to feed you a mageling again,” she grumbled, but let the beast lead. The trail was cold; it was as good a lead as she had.

\---

“Demon on a leash? By the Earth Mother – that’s a new one.”

“I know, right! I wonder if it works with the big ones.”

The Horde camp lay on the edge of the sands; a half-ring of skin and canvas tents around a central firepit. She knew it was Horde by the drying-racks; meat and river-fish, and fresh skins being scraped; the spikes of hewn palm, far more than the blood-red war banners. Jubeka lifted her wide-brimmed hat; they wouldn’t recognise her, but her face was enough of an identifier that she wasn’t merely a stooped, elderly human but a Forsaken, a Horde citizen.

The felhound’s quills were quivering; it strained at the leash. The guards – a broad-chested Tauren and a slim Nightborne – exchanged glances.

“What business have you here, warlock?” the elf enquired.

“I’m here to see the dog groomer,” Jubeka quipped. It worked; there was a half-smile, they let her through.

“Don’t know about that, but there’s certainly plenty here who are wont to behave like a pack of beasts,” the guard commented, glancing over his shoulder after Jubeka. The Nightborne shrugged, adjusting her spectacles.

It was behind the largest tent she found them. The felhound was all but yanking her along by this point, and led her right into the blood elf.

Privacy was apparently of secondary importance to keeping cool. Behind a half-pinned-back tent flap, the orc grunt had the elf bent over and was fucking her fast and hard. The slight elf yelped in time, matted ebony hair flopping over her face as she was jounced backwards and forwards. Her skin was laced with blasphemous tattoos; piercing orange eyes glared permanently from her hands and feet, and inky-dark tentacles snaked up her legs.

Finally the orc was done, grunted, and withdrew, tossing some coins on the floor. The poor elf, quite mad, just stared at her hands and grinned. It was what she supposed to be their pimp that collected them; he was tall and hunched, grey-faced, one of her own kind.

“Are you lost?” he growled, then, detecting money in the cut of Jubeka’s travelling clothes, “…or you favour the ladies? This one can do both, or I’ve an endowed male troll.” He tapped the side of his head. “They’re all crazy – cultists, all of them – but if you’re not paying for conversation…”

The felhound wrenched free from Jubeka’s leash and ran to curl at the elf-woman’s feet. It paced back and forth, sniffing and worrying the ground with its forepaws. The orcs queuing edged back, unwilling to go anywhere near Jubeka’s demon dog.

“If she’s a mage and you just want to eat her, I’m going to banish you to the Twisting Nether. Incrementally. Nose, tail, tendrils,” she warned the hound, but it was clearly agitated, dashing back and forth and sniffing great gulps of the air around the woman. Something on her spoke of their target, spoke of Shinfel. She had to have her.

“Is this what the Horde _is_ now?” Jubeka rounded on the other Forsaken, summoning her most commanding tone. The orc grunts scattered. His jaw slackened further, his bony hands spreading to ward her off, or surrender.

“Is this what we do with _our own people_?”

“These? They’re bloody _enemies_ of the Horde,” he insisted, defensively. “By rights we should have killed them on sight, accursed tentacle-sucking cultists. Making money off them is _serving_ the Horde, and I do my bit, all hail the Warch-, uh, council.”

A harsh word and the felhound’s needle-laden mouth was on the pimp’s leg. The man shrieked, trying to shake off the demon, while the tattooed elf shouted a mad, delighted laugh. Around Jubeka’s feet, a glowing purple summoner’s ring ripped out across the sands as a crackle of shadow magic pulsed from her core out into her extended palms. 

Reality shook, the rift opened, and she felt the hot breath and sullen insolence of the mo’arg soldier she often called upon to fight for her. A single blow of his axe clove the Forsaken’s head in two, like a rotten watermelon. He fell separately into the sands, shiv in hand.

Open treachery felt good. She should have done it long before now.

“Come with me. I am rescuing you.” The prostituted cultist, still laughing, wasn’t listening, so a curt word and the Felguard grappled her. She fought wildly but ineffectively. Jubeka raised her arms and spoke the invocation in a steady tone; the gateway shimmered into view, as the camp was roused. The Tauren was hell-bent on the intruder, charging; the Nightborne behind him, nocking a silver arrow.

The mad elf screamed, as the arrow scored Jubeka’s temple, the Tauren swung his hammer high, the gateway materialised, and the warlock, the demon and their prisoner were through.

\---

In the end she had to bind the girl’s hands and ankles; once the laughing stopped she perhaps gauged the severity of her situation, and kept trying to run off, or claw Jubeka’s eyes out. Fortunately, Jubeka had some experience in the binding and restraint of female blood elves, and so was able to make an effective bundle for her demon to carry.

“I know what you think,” Jubeka told the felguard, “and it’s not your part to have opinions.”

“The deal I made was to fight for you – not to carry your luggage, mortal,” the demon rumbled, brandishing his greataxe to underscore the point. The captive elf whimpered and buried her face in his shoulder. “Your lover serves the Old God so you have found a substitute. Pitiful.”

“Sorry, what was that? Perhaps I am hearing things. After the Legion’s absolute, humiliating defeat, I’d have thought your kind would have no opinions to express, apart from ‘I appreciate you giving me something to do, mistress’. ‘Thank you, mistress’.”

She didn’t normally talk to them, before or after dissection. Maybe the felguard was right; she missed Shinfel.

Here looked good enough; the rocky promontory was sheltered from the harsh, slicing desert wind, and more importantly, the eyes of anyone who might be looking for her. Jubeka paced the site back and forth until she was satisfied, then motioned the demon to put the elf down, which he did with as little grace and as much force as possible, sending the bound figure sprawling in the rocky dust. When Jubeka drew her dagger the whimpers rose to keening screams and the elf tried to wriggle away, helpless with her hands and feet bound.

“You are safe with me,” she told her, dropped to a knee beside her, and cut her hands free.

That was a mistake; the elf flailed wildly and flung herself at Jubeka, trying to impale herself on the dagger.

Jubeka grit her teeth, sheathed the dagger and in a single movement grappled the elf so her arms were restrained, pulled up painfully tight. She was underfed and frail, easily overpowered, and the feeling was far too reminiscent, although this elf was smaller, rounder in body, and her greasy ropes of hair would once have been lustrous ebon falls. 

Jubeka glowered at her. She considered herself to be comfortable with her own state of undeath, but she had a particular loathing for the living when they sought to squander their gift.

“Worthless _brat_. You are unworthy of your miserable existence, I should have left you to your fate. Perhaps I will take you back there.”

Perhaps there was some sliver of sanity left in her, as she went quiet for a moment, obedient. “Please, do not do that,” she said, mechanically. She wasn’t fighting any more, so Jubeka released her, poised to chase her down if she ran.

For the first time, she looked at Jubeka directly, then raised her hands to loosen the dirty cowl she wore around her neck. Beneath it, glistening like quicksilver on the elf’s tattooed décolletage, lay Shinfel’s azerite lavaliere necklace. The elf’s wide, haunted eyes stayed fixed on Jubeka.

“I will help you, but give me the release of death, after. For in the dead city he dreams...”

After, Jubeka was as good as her word. Pocketing the trinket and leaving the corpse for the desert fleshstrippers, she began the journey on foot. The onetime owner of the necklace led a splinter cult in the roots of the mountains to the north, where Uldum melted into Silithus, and that was where the elf believed her to be still. It was all a ruse, a clever ploy; the Old God was neither defeated nor bound. _This is all part of his plan_. 

Shinfel was no fool like the poor, dead whore, and had Jubeka not known in another way what drew people to the Old God, she would never have believed her lover would have fallen for such ridiculous lies.

“Do your kind engage in non-procreative sexual activity?” she asked the felguard, but it marched in sullen silence, unwilling to get drawn into any sort of discussion with warlocks in general, and this one in particular. Jubeka shrugged, and drew her memories close for comfort instead.

\----

The journey to Uldum had been uncomfortable. Not just the blistering heat of the days and the cold nights – it was the company. Shinfel sulked half of the way and raged the rest. The bruise Ritssyn gave her blossomed, then faded on her jaw. Knowing the elf’s bottomless vanity, Jubeka refrained from comment; attempts at conversation were met with barbs. They mainly travelled in silence. At night - Jubeka pretended she hadn't noticed - Shinfel's sleep was unsettled and broken, fragmented with what seemed to be terrible nightmares. 

By evening of that particular day, she had calmed somewhat, deigning to speak to her companion, even. They talked about their work. Shinfel rarely condescended to supervise students, but she had found one that interested her; a young undead woman who had some previously unconsidered insights into the interaction between the Forsaken blight and weaponised disease – Shinfel’s favourite topic. She pushed the girl brutally hard, made her cry, made her mortify her own flesh until it blistered from her bones in endless experimentation – but made her powerful.

“I have a felguard’s liver in a jar. It has great promise toward our understanding of mo’arg physiology,” Jubeka responded in turn, winning a vicious cackle.

“Oh, we’ve moved on from peeled imps? Such a shame, I miss their squeals.”

By night she was even more solicitous; friendly, even, huddling close to Jubeka in the cold. The stars came out; it was quiet. It was always quiet here.

“Touch me,” Shinfel purred into her ear, running her fingers up Jubeka’s thigh. Jubeka clamped down on it with her own gloved hand.

“Don’t,” she warned; not so much because she did not receive; more because Shinfel’s fingertips were an inch from the pocket where two quarters of her soulstone remained. She had the feeling she had had with Kanrethad; although they were purportedly travelling to Uldum to gather information to save the Netherlord, the suspicion was in Jubeka already that Shinfel was similarly afflicted, and she was keeping alert for the moment when she would need to act. What ‘acting’ meant was something she had postponed thinking about. She did not truly know if she had it within herself to kill her.

Shinfel was petulant, shuffling away in rejection, refusing even to share the blanket with Jubeka until she began to shiver.

“Come here,” Jubeka commanded gruffly. She had missed the elf’s soft body, but stripping off their enchanted raiment out here would be too great a risk. There were ways, though. She would make a pleasure-game of it, struggling against buckles, wriggling hands under padded armour and cloth; the striving and the frustration would be the enjoyment.

Whatever was happening to Shinfel, this, too, might grant insights; but if she was honest, it had been too long since she had done this; she wanted it, but did not want to seem too eager, or let slip her disloyal thoughts.

“Hmm,” she growled, shifting her body around, pulling Shinfel close against her, sliding a thigh between hers. She bit down on the soft, downy earlobe as Shinfel moaned wantonly, excessively, straddling and straining to press harder, rubbing herself backward and forwards against Jubeka’s leather-clad thigh. Clearly, Shinfel had no such compunctions about hiding her need, or any shame whatsoever.

Jubeka pressed close and inhaled the smell of her hair; apricots, sweat, salt and something repulsive. She checked her dagger was secure at her side, then wriggled a hand under Shinfel’s robe and inside her leggings, straining her fingers over her slim rump, the hip bone, the thigh –

\- the downy softness where she wanted to bury her face; to probe, to caress, to elicit those sounds only Shinfel could make. Closing her eyes, Jubeka imagined what she could not see; the crop of silky amber-gold hair, the roseate lips, the little nub enclosed in its folds that only she knew how to awaken. She began to stroke, at first gently, sliding her hand back and forth, encouraged by Shinfel’s quickening breathing.

“I know,” she rumbled throatily, feeling the quiver of Shinfel’s ear at the deep burr of her voice. Faster, now, and more firmly; she felt the slickness coming between her fingers now; Shinfel was sighing and gasping, her commands for more almost swallowed by her unsteady breathing. She didn’t exactly hold back her sounds on Dreadscar, and out here she was truly uninhibited, lost in the moment. The gasps became yelps and cries of pleasure, which stirred Jubeka in turn.

_What is power,_ came the whisper _–_ oh, she knew what power was, and right now, it was that the constrained, twisted action of her hand could render her lover helpless like this. Her free hand still gloved, Jubeka grabbed a fistful of Shinfel’s bright hair, pulling her head back as she began to work her clit with bruising pressure and speed, that would have been too much, painful even, for a lesser being. It was just right for Shinfel. Her slender body tensed; she bucked, she screamed.

Fingers still coiled around her secret place, Jubeka could feel the involuntary clenches and shudders ripple through her, and for a moment, she felt an echo of it in herself.

Shaking her hand free from under the robes and buckles, she tasted her fingers – salt-sweet as ever – and manoeuvred her body around to face Shinfel. The blood elf had that unfocused look about her, lips wet, hair tangled, delectable.

“I have more things to do to you,” Jubeka told her, roused by the ideas. She moved to flip Shinfel onto her front for easier access, but the elf curled, resisting. Jubeka grabbed her and tried to reposition her, but Shinfel was shaking her head, trying to pry Jubeka’s fingers off her.

“What?”

“No – I wish to sleep.” Shinfel promptly shook off Jubeka’s grip and threw her body down, drawing the heavy cloak around her.

“…huh. Where’s your stamina gone?” Jubeka wondered. “Are you sick, or are you not ‘thrice a night’ Blightsworn any more?”

No response from the curled mound.

“The Netherlord has spoilt you,” she complained, although without any real ill-feeling. It had been good, certainly enough to content herself with until the end of their journey. What she couldn’t shake, though, was that feeling of revulsion; certainly, she had been repulsed by Shinfel many times before, but this was new. Shinfel slept, and Jubeka stoked the fire.

\----

The loss of true sleep had been one of the hardest parts of undeath to accept, but now, the hours of rest were trance-like and refreshing as they might be. It was time to think, so when the time came to act, she would be ready. Jubeka understood her duty. Shinfel’s uncharacteristic silence might mean she understood too.

She had been dreaming, perhaps, as when she came back to herself the moon had set, and she was alone; Shinfel’s bundled form was not there. In a second, Jubeka was upright, hand on her dagger, an invocation ready on her tongue.

Shinfel was standing on the ridge of the dune, upright but slack-postured as if held there by a will other than her own. Her face was turned upwards, gazing sightlessly at the night sky over the dunes, and her cloak had slid from her shoulders, revealing pale, scar-riddled skin. In the inky dark, something moved across the clouds; it had the body of a serpent, but greater, and to look on it, Jubeka felt a coldness creep in, a kind of unravelling. _He is calling her_ , she thought. _The time to act will be soon. He almost has her completely now._

In a few short paces she was beside her. Jubeka grabbed Shinfel by the wrists and dragged her roughly back to the campsite. The sleepwalker complied, her wide, vacant eyes sliding closed after a short time, returning to the twitching, fitful restlessness of earlier. Jubeka kept hold of her protectively, staring up into the rolling dark, continuing to work through the sequence of events in her mind. In the rolling dark, her imagination became richer; the scenario had full colour.

Ritssyn would ask questions, but she could answer them. Kira would do as she was told. Zinnin... he would understand why she would return alone. Zinnin, right now, might have acted already and bathed his hands in the Netherlord's blood. He would understand better than any. What would that make her? First of the Council of the Black Harvest, Netherlord of Dreadscar…

_What is power_ , she thought – no, she heard, or perceived, as the voice came from within, but was not her own.

_What is power but finding the one before whom we all must kneel?_

Jubeka’s body stilled as a single high, light note singed her senses.

_Serve me, dutiful one, banisher, vigil-keeper. Ever giving, never receiving. In me is everything you seek._

The vision exploded, not in light, but knowledge, awakening, a thousand eyes opening. The secrets of the world laid bare, not alluded to in an ancient grimoire or coaxed from the tongues of reluctant demons. And there was more, that brightness that danced across her senses, that most elusive, beautiful thing she had grimly concluded was not for her; she had set herself miserable, lonely tasks to run away from it, and found she could not.

_Let go._

It was quiet – it had always been quiet. The vision faded as quickly as it had materialised in front of her; the grandiose images, the rich, riming voice from the deep were gone. The desert night was punctuated by only her ragged, rapid breathing, the skitter of a scorpion, the inaudible hiss of a million million shifting grains of sand –

\- and Shinfel’s eyes - awake, wide, blue, _afraid_.

Jubeka only then realised she was gripping her dagger again, the tip pressed into the hollow of the elf’s throat.


	5. Confidences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A frightened Jubeka returns to Dreadscar to deal with the consequences of her vision, and receives counsel from her colleagues Zinnin and Kanrethad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used to write before and this was not how I used to do it. There used to be a Plan. I have no idea where this is going. I guess it'll be finished when it's finished.
> 
> I am surprised it ended up being Jubeka's story so much. Originally I wanted to write more Shinfel's POV, but I have a soft spot for Forsaken, and I suppose the master demonologist had a lot to say.

Zinnin’s glare was thunderous, his burning eyes fixed on Jubeka in disbelief. He didn’t need to speak to convey his meaning. _What the fel are you doing back here, and why are you alone?_

Jubeka gave no thought to her appearance; she was covered in dust, the scored arrow-wound to her scalp clagged with dried blood, her eyes wide and mad as her most recent victim.

“Zinnin - what have you done with the Netherlord?” she demanded wildly.

The worgen fixed her with a long, steady look, then rose, keeping his movements slow and deliberate. He planted his heavy forepaws on Jubeka’s shoulders and made her sit down. She folded like a chaff of straw; she was exhausted and overwrought.

He examined her closely, then spread his lupine forepaws, as if to say, _Nothing – yet._

Jubeka stared at the table for a moment, then put her face in her hands and began to sob. It was ugly, helpless crying, embarrassing for her and anyone else, but she didn’t seem to have any control over it. “I do not belong to him,” she managed between gulps for air. “I _will not._ ” She spoke without direction, to herself and to Zinnin’s back, who had turned for a moment, returning with a dark bottle and two glasses.

Zinnin poured brandy – a measure for each, and a splash onto a soft cloth, to clean Jubeka’s head wound. She barely seemed to register pain as the spirit burned into the cut and the rubbing motion pulled away clumps of dried blood plastered to her hair.

“You _must not_ kill him, because it’s me. It’s always been me. Do you understand?”

Zinnin nodded, slowly. It was unclear whether he understood or not, but he was listening. He motioned to her to drink, and tossed his own shot back in one, letting out a growl. Jubeka’s throat was tight from tears, but she swallowed anyway. It didn’t burn like it did in life, but she felt a little warmth spread out down her throat and into her belly.

He made a sudden gesture, drawing his paws in sharply: _pull yourself together_ , it seemed to say. _Wait._ He turned abruptly, and was gone.

She understood that. It wasn’t a lack of kindness or sympathy, although that was never something she particularly expected from warlocks. If anything, leaving her to herself _was_ kindness, in her present state. Dreadscar was a conquered Legion world; the demonic troops served the strongest, and she was currently a deep, open crack in the Netherlord’s armour. She understood. She sat up straighter and tried to regulate her emotions. She was here to save the Netherlord and then have him banish her forever. Friendship was rare and fleeting for those that walked her path. She had had more than she supposed she deserved.

There was someone at the door. Not Zinnin, because he knocked softly; and he spoke. “Jubeka?”

It was Kanrethad. It was unusual to see him out of his lurid purple raiment; he was simply clad in homespun black, his chestnut mane loose. The Black Harvest’s most powerful magister – and greatest failure – looked more like a farmer from his native Darkshire. Perhaps, Jubeka wondered dimly, he was trying to put distance between his past and his present self.

“I suppose it would be you.”

“Jubeka…” Kanrethad took a seat beside her. “I don’t presume to judge you, I’m hardly in a position to do that - but I would like you to tell me everything. The Council’s survival may depend on it.”

It took a moment for her to order her thoughts; hesitantly at first, she began to speak. She told him of her fears about the Netherlord and Shinfel, and how she had realised in Uldum that it had all been a decoy, that the Old God was using them as a means to get to _her_. She recalled how, vision-drunk, she had drawn a blade on Shinfel, they had fought, and Shinfel had fled. She explained her realisation that she now posed a threat to the Council, perhaps the world, and she was here to hand herself over to the Netherlord, and beg his forgiveness, and ask him to put an end to her.

Kanrethad listened without interrupting, but he seemed to relax as Jubeka related the tale. That woke a spark of irritation dating back to Outland; the man was clever, but he knew it. Even for those long years when she held him banished, his fel-twisted image still seemed to know something she didn’t.

“Unless, as usual, you have a better idea?” she croaked.

“Not at all. I actually don’t blame you for not realising.” Jubeka bristled at the condescending tone, but listened. “You were out in the field, but I have been here with Zinnin and the First – in the centre of it all, as it were. We’ve been keeping a close eye on him, and Zinnin has a way with people. It was obvious that he was unwell, troubled – and afraid.”

“Are we talking about the same man?” Jubeka wondered.

“He’s younger than you think he is, and he’s seen and done more than you know. I respected him for the power that I witnessed at the Black Temple, but Zinnin listened to him. He’s good at that. Zinnin persuaded him that it takes more than a bit of odd behaviour for us to give up on one of our own.” He flexed his hands, still relearning their use. “Perhaps I am living proof of that. I managed to convince him the council wouldn’t conspire against him in secret…”

Jubeka’s lip quirked; she swiftly applied a neutral expression. “Of course we wouldn’t.”

“He decided he could confide in us. He told us about his dreams, his visions. He said he understood that he had to go to Ny’alotha, to face the Old God.”

“That would give anyone nightmares,” Jubeka murmured, her mind involuntarily recalling the scene laid out before her in Uldum, the alien landscape under a rising sun, knowledge unbound – and Shinfel, wide-eyed, the tip of her knife pressed into that soft peach-white flesh.

“Yes.” Kanrethad didn’t notice her distraction; he gazed past her, lost in a recollection of his own. “He said he wouldn’t be alone, but… he said a lot, not all of which I will share out of respect for his confidences, but suffice it to say a lot is resting on his shoulders at the moment.” Kanrethad folded his hands together on the table. “And Zinnin told him – well, wrote to him – that he’d seen the visions too.”

Jubeka sat up abruptly, but Kanrethad was not finished.

“It is not just him, it’s not just you. The Netherlord is worse off as N’Zoth knows what is to come and is focusing his attention on him, but the Old God is apparently hedging his bets. He would like nothing better than our council turned against each other, and whoever is left standing subverted to his will.” He unfolded his hands. “That’s why we cannot accompany him to Ny’alotha; we’d be a liability. We were able to communicate with Ritssyn before he and Kira tore too many chunks off each other, and they, too, have been targeted. Each was absolutely convinced the other was in league with N’Zoth and about to murder them.”

“Those two never needed much of an excuse,” she observed, getting a grunt of agreement from Kanrethad.

“Quite. I’m nobody, now, but he called to me, too.” His calm expression became shadowed for a moment. “ _Release the demon within. Reign in the Black Temple. Take what was once yours_.”

“Let go,” murmured Jubeka, and Kanrethad visibly flinched.

“Yes.”

Jubeka covered her face, massaging her brows.

“I have been foolish – and arrogant. You can have Zinnin record that in the ledger, if you want to.”

Kanrethad reached out to her, in some human attempt at comfort. His big, blunt hands enclosed her bony ones and drew them down from her face. “You are the strongest, most resolute warlock I have ever met. None of us were prepared for this – just as we weren’t ready for the Twilight’s Hammer, the Firelord, or the secrets of Illidan’s demonic apotheosis.” He rubbed his chin ruefully. “So we adapt. We do not give up, we do what is necessary – what others fear to do – and we find a way.”

Jubeka nodded, turning the now-empty glass between her hands. “Shinfel is out there by herself.”

“Yes,” Kanrethad nodded. “That was actually my next point. As a loyal acolyte of the Black Harvest, although you are my superior and the honoured Third on the council, I think I have to kill you on sight for returning alone. I’m going to close my eyes now and when I open them, perhaps you’ll be gone and I won’t need to do that.”

She grinned in spite of everything.

“Thank you, Kanrethad.”

“Closing my eyes now. This conversation did not take place.”


	6. Oil and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last instalment in this particular story; Jubeka goes to retrieve Shinfel, but there's more than an Old God between them now.

“Love is fleeting. Power is eternal.” – Elithys Firestorm

\---

Chaos bolts lit the chamber with juddering flashes of electric green; curses roiled over Jubeka’s skin. Her summoned felguard roared and bisected a cultist with his greataxe; four more rushed in to crowd him, gashing at his grey stone-flesh with wicked daggers.

The spells and commands Jubeka had marshalled spilled from her lips, but something dragged at her concentration here; it was as though her will were encased in a dense, greasy darkness. There was a sense of displacement, as if she were not truly in Uldum any more. 

The lead ritualist, serene and apparently unaware of the battle going on around her, floated several inches above the floor, facing the ritual focus. Void swirled around her, painting her skin in black and oily cobalt. She had the aspect of a sleepwalker; that was what Jubeka recalled, Shinfel on the dune captivated by her visions. Her pale hair fluttered in the unseen breeze that should not exist in the roots of the mountains, her thin hands spread grasping over the chasm where something stirred in the deep. She was channelling power down into it, drawing on the energy of several crystals that ringed the chamber.

_Victory, or illusion?_ came the whisper into Jubeka’s mind. The inky dark pressed in close, and then, _She sleeps her way to power, and now she sleeps at my side. You will join her soon._

Jubeka’s eyes widened in horror as, in her mind, the ritual lead – Shinfel – turned – but there wasn’t a face any more, just a bottomless, empty maw, eyes, and claws, rushing up from the dark to devour her.

The distraction was nearly fatal. The demon roared, slashed from hip to collarbone; felblood hissed on the stones. She felt the vicious yank on the ties binding the summoned felguard to her; the Nether licked at her heels, and when the demon fell, they would be upon her; they would tear her apart. There was no time; she gashed her wrist with her own dagger and spat out the dark enchantment. The open vein began to disgorge itself in a glittering red mist, spilling forth into the air and into the body of the felguard.

_It will not be enough_.

“It must be,” she growled, screwing up her eyes and willing herself to bleed faster.

For Jubeka, it happened in slowed time, a series of agonisingly extended tableaux. The fact of it was that three brutal axe slices later, the fight was over.

Jubeka stumbled to her knees, rasping for breath as her hands fumbled for a stoppered bottle about her belt. The felguard’s eyes glowed dimly in the dark; its resentment looming large, almost a physical presence. The stones around were slick with both their blood. Shinfel still hung suspended, fully immersed in channelling. In the silence that reigned now, her voice could be heard, softly chanting in no mortal tongue.

“The crystals -” Jubeka gasped as she finally freed the cork and tipped the potion down her throat. She could feel barely-restrained defiance tearing at her will, making her hands shake. The clawing pain of the afflictive curses creeping over her body soon began to ease, although she was still desperately weak from loss of blood. She began to half-walk, half-crawl her reluctant body towards the battlefront.

As the last crystal shattered under the felguard’s axe-butt, the entranced summoner gently sank back to earth. She stood for a moment, swaying on the edge of the abyss, void tendrils caressing her. Jubeka leapt to her feet and lunged forward to catch her before she fell. Gripping the dazed elf around her waist, Jubeka stumbled backwards, falling hard with Shinfel on top of her. 

It was absolutely dark with the crystals snuffed out; only the enchantments on Jubeka’s armour and the pallid corpselight in her eyes gave any illumination to Shinfel’s face.

There was an unearthly groan, a rumble from deep below, then silence. Two heartbeats. Jubeka’s breath, rasping hard; Shinfel’s a soft whisper.

“Shinfel?” Jubeka croaked, when she dared.

The blood elf’s eyelids fluttered; the arcane light was there, spilling down her cheeks and illuminating her lover and colleague’s face. Recognition, perhaps. At the very least, _life_.

“Shinfel,” Jubeka whispered, feeling the tension that gripped her since they parted steadily begin to melt – but it was not to last.

With a choked cry, Shinfel immediately recoiled, scrambling to get away. Jubeka, miserably weak, couldn’t hold her. She was never going to be able to fight her, she realised. She felt the last thread of something in her snap, like a string drawn out too thinly.

“Shinfel, I won’t hurt you…” she pleaded, but the elf was already beginning to cast. Jubeka closed her eyes for the inevitable.

Time moved differently for a moment. There was the slick stones underfoot, the distant desert wind outside –

\- the heavy tread behind her, the press on her will of a malevolent, inhuman intelligence – a raised great-axe, ready to cleave her in two –

\- and the demon’s form disintegrated, banished to the Nether.

“The Master Demonologist is losing her edge,” Shinfel observed laconically, dropping her hand that had carved the sigil of banishment into the air.

Whatever else she had become or done, she remained a warlock. _She remained herself_. Jubeka let out a breath she couldn’t recall holding. She was shaking all over. She struggled to regulate her tone.

“Come back to us. We are both… slight outlaws, now, but we will find a way to make it right.” The fingers on her outstretched hand were trembling. The elf regarded her as she might a cave insect or puddle.

“I thought you might come. I am grateful you killed them, they got on my nerves. Perhaps you and I might continue this work. Eat a healthstone, Shadowbreaker, before you fall over.”

Jubeka did as recommended, feeling unnatural vitality surge back into her drained-white limbs.

“Shinfel – the Old Gods have been cleansed from Azeroth. Chasing a vestige, an echo, of something defeated? Come on. You’re more than that. You’re _greater_ than that.”

Shinfel laughed. “Flattery doesn’t suit you. You can understand my work here or not. Just say what you came to say.”

Jubeka looked at the smooth black stone beneath her feet.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Jubeka whispered, eventually. “I realised I couldn’t.” More gruffly, to disguise the break in her voice: “Come on, this is over. The Council is disbanded, we can rule Dreadscar together. Chase whatever power you want, do your work; just… let me be with you.”

Shinfel stared, seemingly unsure whether to accept the offer, or just preparing a suitably cutting retort. She flicked a void-maddened cave spider from her shoulder with an idle gesture.

Jubeka’s next move was borne of desperation. “ _Please_!”

She lunged forward and grabbed Shinfel tightly, her hands desperately, madly grasping, forming a vice grip around the elf’s upper arms. She felt the elf startle, her breath catch, the momentary flash of fear in her eyes. Then, Shinfel sagged against Jubeka, as if the urgency of her demand had sheared through the strings holding her upright.

It was different from before; being hauled out of a ritual trance often made people dizzy, but the sudden collapse had Jubeka worried. She called Shinfel’s name, shook her, felt for her heartbeat.

_You will be all alone at the end._

The darkness pulsed, and so did the elf’s heart. She lived, or at least, her body did. There was something unnatural about it that Jubeka could not put a finger on here. Whatever impulse had possessed her to grab hold of Shinfel was still in evidence, keeping the rational functions of her mind bound; she felt she had to seek help, but as yet, had no concept of what that meant. In the absolute dark, Jubeka dragged Shinfel’s limp body round so she had a firm hold on her, and delved in her pocket for their way out of the dark hollow of madness and fragmented dreams.

Shinfel didn’t wake for some days, and before they even reached the nearest settlement with a safe path home, she had started with the fever.

\---

There was a disagreement about what to do next; Ernie was adamant no dark magic was taking place in his house. The winter storms that lashed the coast of the Broken Isles showed no sign of abating; the rain was shot through with sleet, and the road was impassable.

  
“I can’t move her in this condition,” Jubeka protested.

“Yeah, well, if a demon or god bursts out of her head when you do it, I don’t want it on _my_ kitchen table.” The alchemist crossed his arms across his chest. “I’ve a mind to kick you out right now. You did _not_ tell me what you were bringing into my house.”

Jubeka’s hands filled with swirling shadows.

“Don’t even _think_ about it. I’ve been around longer than you and I know things. I can make you wish you’d stayed dead.”

“I very much doubt that.” Jubeka stood her ground, counting on Ernie not being willing to start a fight in his own house. It was a correct assumption; he backed down.

“If this doesn’t work, your friend’s best hope is the priestesses at the Temple of the Moon, if the sentinels don’t shoot you on sight. I can put a crimp in a curse or flush out a sickness, but this is beyond that. I’ve done all I can, and more than I should have,” he told her, tossed his overcoat around his shoulders, and stomped back out into the driving rain.

Ernie’s assessment wasn’t news to Jubeka; what she had suspected in Uldum was now all but confirmed. A soul is such a fragile thing; once ripped from its host, insubstantial as dust, easily bound into a shard and expended, forever dissipated, irretrievable by no means known to anyone alive. Jubeka’s life’s work had shredded, wracked and bound so many souls, but this one, she would handle with tender care.

They really were going to use the kitchen table, so Ernie’s fears might yet be realised. Jubeka rocked back on her heels for a moment, checking and re-checking, steadying her mind, re-affirming the rarely-used invocations in her head before she gave them voice. Shinfel was laid out on the rough-hewn wood, head tilted back, hands and feet restrained with loose bindings around the table legs. Jubeka was working from memory, but she knew touching a soul can have unpredictable effects on the associated body.

Shinfel’s condition was dire, and, Jubeka thought, deteriorating. Ernie had lent her a nightshirt, which was already soaked through with sweat, and Jubeka had noted the elf’s heart was beating too quickly, her breathing laboured and rapid. At the head of the table, procured with some difficulty, lay the Staff of Torment. Neglected, wood-wormed, chipped, it was in nearly as poor a condition as its mistress. All working correctly, the body would be enough of an anchor. Jubeka’s appraisal of the body’s condition was such that she thought the staff was worth having on hand, just in case.

At the appointed time, Jubeka placed her hands gently on the sides of the blood elf’s head, thumbs resting on her temples, fingers parted around her ears and nestled into the damp hair. She closed her eyes, and began to incant. The room faded away and was replaced by the swirling recesses of the Dark, the place where lost souls go to hide. 

The first obstacle she met was Rittsyn, wreathed in a halo of flames, his scarred visage looming over her, larger than life. “Warlocks cannot heal,” he scoffed, before dissipating into the air. Her own doubts would be the first barrier. “Well, of course we cannot, but we can _mend._ Help, or be quiet.”

She’d barely finished dealing with Ritssyn when her own capability was cast into doubt, a shake in her hands, a mis-spoken invocation – envisaged by her imagination, which she loathed at this moment, by a choir of thousands of tiny Zellifrax Wobblepoxes, willing her to get it wrong.

“We find a way,” she said, recalling Kanrethad’s words. She was getting to where she needed to be, and she knew she must set the distractions aside.

She found Shinfel in the dark, as she had been at Dalaran, smiling, ambition in her eyes as she ran her fingers over the azerite trinket the Netherlord had given her. Here, Jubeka felt an echo of everything; she was close to Shinfel in a way she never had been before, even at their most intimate moments.

She navigated her blinding rage at Kira Iresoul, when the young Sixth dared to question what lingering effect the battle with Cho’gall had had on her. Through Shinfel’s eyes, Jubeka felt it; the shame and fury at the challenge, the underlying dread that there was more than a little truth to it. Jubeka strove to keep control on the incantation, even as Ritssyn loomed large in the vision and struck Shinfel down. It hurt, Jubeka realised, a lot more than it looked. Since the departure of Zellifrax, Shinfel was the physically weakest of them. Jubeka had never thought about that before.

Deeper now, there was pain, there was torment, at the hands of the Eredar Twins, cursed to wither and die at their pleasure - and before, in the battle with Cho’gall. Jubeka tasted what it was like to feel the blood in her body turn to fire, for her will to be subsumed, her mind violated, her body turned against her. She felt each and every one of the scars being burned into Shinfel’s flesh from the inside. Even this shadow of the pain Shinfel had experienced was almost unbearable; it took a monumental effort to keep her touch light and not grip Shinfel’s face too tightly. In the room, the energy of the spell poured from Jubeka, illuminating her with a pale sickly glow. As for Shinfel, her body had gone rigid, fingers pressed into the table, her mouth open as she gasped for air; the work was taking its toll on both of them. Jubeka forced herself to continue.

They were now in unfamiliar territory. A path lined with trees, the golden light of early autumn; Quel’thalas, young high-elven mages attending their lessons. One, lacking in wealth or status, who had the aptitude and the _hunger_ but was excluded.

It was a litany of nasty little crimes. A solitary child taking out her anger on whatever she could find. Her lies, her thefts, her murders. Imprisonment, punishment, then freedom just as her world was ripped apart. The scholars who might have been her classmates – now lying in bloodied heaps along with the Farstriders, the city guards, everyone who stood against the Scourge. An amnesty, a chance to rebuild, but she had little taste for it. Blue eyes turned fel-green, and a painful, burning hunger. Exile – voluntary, more or less. The barren scarred slopes of Outland. The first demon Shinfel coerced into her service, and the next, and the next. The first grimoire she devoured, the first thing she killed with its contents.

The facets circled before Jubeka, each dancing with life, all part of the song of Shinfel’s soul – yet still broken.

Jubeka reached out in her mind. What was missing?

The scenario faded and Dreadscar Rift materialised.

It was the physical sensation that almost made her lose control. Bile rose in Jubeka’s throat as she felt someone’s finger, cool, insistent, violating, probing at her entrance and then sliding inside her. Her hips involuntarily twisted to get away from the unwanted touch; she almost let go of Shinfel’s face, she almost lost it.

Close to her ear, now - a throaty voice – her own – whispered that a demonic torment she had recently barely survived was to be inflicted on her for another warlock’s amusement, and she must bear it. Jubeka took a shaky breath, tried to focus on the ritual and not the sensation, and moved on, even though the soul fragment was vibrating with Shinfel’s remembered betrayal, her abject terror.

She pushed further down this line of memory. All the things Jubeka had done to Shinfel danced in front of her eyes. Through Shinfel’s eyes, Jubeka was tall, relentless, terrifying. Jubeka the self-assured, noble-born master demonologist; Shinfel the nameless exile, whose mastery of making things die was unequalled, but some thought her a blunt instrument, unsubtle, unstable; she was unfavourably compared to Jubeka. (The student who had first made _that_ unwise comparison lost his eyes, and his tongue, and was reduced to a mass of pustulated flesh. Jubeka hadn’t known Shinfel had been behind that, until now.)

Her own face seemed distorted in Shinfel’s eyes; demonic, monstrous. To her mind, she had given pleasure equally, and Shinfel adored to be hurt. _No_ , said her own intuition, although now it had the elf-girl’s voice. _I wanted to show you I could take it._

She felt her own – Shinfel’s – eyes widen as Jubeka explained what she was about to do. The restraints chafed her – Shinfel’s – wrists, which had previously been shackled by her own people. She remembered doing it, clenching her fist in front of Shinfel’s face and telling her she would take it, but the elf had laughed; she didn’t know she was afraid, but resolved to accept anything from Jubeka, to show that she was not weak – and she had not been. She had taken it all, and lied that it was nothing to her, and demanded more.

Stars whirled around her, it was that night in Uldum. Shinfel woke from her troubled dreams to find Jubeka’s knife at her throat, her lover’s mad, murderous eyes fixed on her. The whispers were amplified here, deafening, irresistible. To one so betrayed, what was a change of allegiance? Love, trust, the Black Harvest, the Horde – all were illusory. All were lies, everyone was corrupt, and identifying the true nature of everything brought one closer to its source, to truth.

It struck Jubeka to the heart, but she knew this was the wound that needed to be healed. With care and precision, she gently began to lift the warped, tainted facet away from the soul.

Shinfel convulsed, her eyes rolling back in her head. A high cry burst from her lungs as the air was forcibly expelled and her body jerked rigidly against the manipulation. Jubeka bit hard on her lip and held her nerve, clamping her hands down tightly on Shinfel’s burning skin to restrict movement. The wind howled around the house and sweat beaded on her forehead as she poured her power into maintaining the link.

_It is standing right behind you_. _Do not move. Do not –_

She was dimly aware of Ernie coming in but not what he was saying; the ritual demanded her full concentration. The slightest slip would ruin the soul and kill the body that carried it.

_\- breathe –_

She knew it was done when Shinfel’s convulsing body fell still. Jubeka, drained, sank into a chair.

Ernie was speaking to her, but she didn’t understand the words. Her thoughts were forming and unravelling; dimly, she thought she had succeeded. It was only when he shoved a handkerchief at her that she realised the water on her cheeks was her own tears.

The storms broke up later that day, and Shinfel’s fever receded with them. Watery sunlight spilled into the cottage kitchen. Ernie, coerced back into the role of reluctant healer, had a pot on the stove and the whole place smelt of wet leaves and cloying fungi. He wiped the sweat away from the elf’s hands and face, felt the pulse at her wrist and neck, and nodded. She was insensible, but it was true sleep now, not the deathly coma that had fallen on her since Uldum.

The tea was for Jubeka. She drank and slept without dreaming, for the first time in weeks. When she woke up, Shinfel – in short bursts, still weak from her ordeal – was preparing them for a journey.

\---

Demons were waiting for them.

“It has been such a long time,” the succubus purred, hooves clacking as she sashayed down the portal approach. “We hardly ever see our friends any more.”

Shinfel had once loved to put the demons in their place; now, wrapped in a heavy borrowed cloak and leaning on Jubeka’s arm, she said nothing.

“The Netherlord has asked me to hold the Rift in his stead,” Jubeka told the demon, who pouted, swishing her tail.

“Not the flaming orc? I liked him.”

“I’m sure the Netherlord would be pleased to have his decisions questioned by your ilk.” Jubeka pulled an arm protectively around Shinfel as they proceeded. The detachment of felguard slouched, malevolent eyes followed them as they proceeded towards the high overlook. The Legion’s work is built on chaos, without oversight and a strong hand, it will eventually revert to its base state, and this captured fragment needed to be brought to heel. One by one, she had oaths of obedience from the wrathguard champion, the grand inquisitor, the chief jailer.

“If any one would challenge me, there is room for more hearts,” she added. None had a mind to. “Netherlord Shadowbreaker, we pledge our service. Your will be done.”

They were uncertain what to do about the other, the new Netherlord’s companion. An inquisitor versed in protocol whispered a suggestion in the champion’s ear.

“Welcome back, warlock Blightsworn,” Bulzan added, uncertainly, and had the army of felguard salute again. Jubeka nodded her approval.

They had privacy at last. The silks were mildewed and would need to be replaced, but Shinfel’s quarters were much as they always were. Jubeka fell on her body with tenderness and affection, slowly, carefully, solicitous in every gesture, asking permission. There would be no pain today. There would be no pain ever again.

She attended to her lover’s every need, kissing down her belly, nuzzling into the soft hair of the pubis, then, gently, caressing all around, up and down and inside with her tongue and lips. Shinfel’s breathing quickened, she frowned, unused to being treated so gently, but sure enough, Jubeka’s loving, soft caresses brought her to her edge and past it. She came with a soft sigh, not her previous shrieks of pleasure.

They rested, ate, and made love again, until Shinfel was too dizzy and tired to continue.

“You will heal,” Jubeka counselled her, caressing the elf’s forehead as her eyes dipped closed. “You are safe.”

Shinfel rested there for several days, recovering her strength. “She is not to be disturbed. Give her everything she asks for,” Jubeka ordered, and the demons were eager to comply.

One day, Jubeka came to look for her and found her quarters empty, the blood elf and her staff gone.

There was no letter, no message, but in a way, Jubeka was unsurprised. It was Shinfel’s way to take what she needed without thanks, and Jubeka’s to give without expectation.

Sitting alone in the high seat above Dreadscar, she shuffled through her memories, smiling at the bright ones. She did not know if she would ever see her brilliant, damaged lover again. Perhaps a time would come when the council would reunite, but then again, perhaps not. Obsolescence held some appeal. She flexed her hand, still feeling the ache where Shinfel had smashed her staff down on her, in Outland, long ago. 

After a time, she rose, and went to see about the tasks of a Netherlord.


End file.
